European service providers' ongoing effort to install more fiber into buildings to accommodate business services drove up availability to 20.5 percent of commercial buildings throughout the region. Provided by one or multiple service providers, these fiber-connected buildings with 20 or more employees can access services that can scale up to multiple Gbps rates.

Economic issues during the last half of 2011 in Europe have made it a challenging market for service providers installing fiber and securing new business customers.

By comparison, the penetration of fiber into U.S. commercial buildings rose to 31.8 percent in 2011.

Although direct fiber is the preferred access technology for higher-bandwidth business network services, particularly carrier Ethernet, the so-called "fiber gap" in both Europe and the United States remains an issue.

"Access to business fiber has more than doubled between 2005 and 2011, both in Europe and in the U.S., however more than one million buildings in these markets are still not fiber-connected," said Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical Systems Group, in a news release. "Domestic and global service providers will continue to strategically broaden and deepen their fiber infrastructures."

For more:- see the release

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